


even harmless in death

by orphan_account



Category: Among Us (Video Game), TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Betrayal, Impostors, Other, Space Stations, The Skeld (Among Us), Video Game: Among Us, a bit of sookai?, cysm storyline if u squint, ill fix the tags someday, somewhat futuristic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26754457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When you are miles away from Earth and a friend dearest to you is murdered, what will you do? For Huening Kai, it is a game of running away from suspicions and distrust just until one of them gets voted off and left to die in space.
Relationships: Choi Soobin & Huening Kai, Choi Soobin/Huening Kai, Crewmate/Crewmate (Among Us), Impostor/Impostor (Among Us)
Kudos: 12





	even harmless in death

**Author's Note:**

> i know this is shit but i needed to get this out of me. so things to note before reading: i am not a native english speaker and this is not beta-ed so expect some inaccuracies, grammatical errors, etc. also i have never tried writing out of my usual canon compliant and h/c fics so pls go easy on me.
> 
> suits are based off my fave hair colors on txt  
> yeonjun - yellow (blond)  
> soobin - blue  
> huening kai - black  
> beomgyu - brown  
> taehyun - pink
> 
> also included molang as the first victim bcs i couldn't think of anyone else and i didnt want to have non-txts here so yeah just think of molang as a human being lmao
> 
> i have no song to promote (other than the song title which is phoebe bridgers' killer) but pls play among us with me :(

The tragedy is this: someone from The Skeld has died.

No.

Actually, it wasn’t just someone; it was Molang, a friend closest to Huening Kai and a person he’s willing to risk his life for. It wasn’t just a simple stupid death because here’s the thing—he was murdered by someone in this ship. There's a traitor here, an impostor, a murderer. And they have to find out who before they all die in the outer space.

Accidental death was what it was projected as; said that the floor must’ve been left wet that day, and Molang walking down that empty hallway, only to slip and hit his head badly, rendering him unconscious until his heart stopped beating. But no matter how Huening Kai looks at it, it wasn’t that simple. And even if they have all moved on from the incident, as if they all seemed to accept this reasoning, deep down it all boils to one thing: Molang was obviously killed, and murdered with intent.

It was far from accidental. For one, there had been a sabotage in the ship on the day of Molang’s death.

Huening Kai was in the navigation room that day, trying to upload data while being assisted by Yeonjun, two years his senior, who was in the opposite corner of the room being assigned to stabilize the steering of the ship. It all happened too fast, to be honest. Right out of nowhere, the doors started to close by themselves, leaving them trapped inside. He remembers Yeonjun looking at him in confusion before clicking his tongue and mumbling, “That’s weird.” Huening Kai who was just as stunned could only nod his head in agreement.

Then, as if it couldn’t get any weirder, the alarms started blaring off in all directions with the automated voice in the intercoms announcing that the oxygen levels inside the ship is depleting. It was a very weird experience for Huening Kai, being locked in a room, the oxygen depleting, and it’s almost as if he could imagine himself dying. He remembers thinking he didn’t want to die like that.

Fortunately, Yeonjun, who was more capable and cool-headed in life-threatening situations, had contacted the rest of the team and they had all confirmed that they, too, were in the same situation. They were running out of time thinking of solutions and then when they had almost given up, all the doors opened automatically, giving them no time to think but to run to the nearest oxygen tanks.

Yeonjun had hold him by this shoulders, his arms weighing him down and gritted, “Kai, listen to me. Beomgyu is still stuck inside the reactor. I will see what I can do to get him out of there.”

His senior’s words had blur out of his mouth while Huening Kai’s mind spins in circles.

“What do I do?” He was breathing badly with the oxygen getting lesser and lesser and the panic boiling inside him.

“Head to the O2 room right now. You’ll meet with the other guys in there and go fix what you could fix.” Yeonjun had difficulty breathing too, his figure slowly slouching as he tries to speak in between breaths.

Nodding, Huening Kai who was driven by adrenaline rush had exited out of the room and limped across the hallways on his way to the O2 which was just across the navigation room from where they was locked in.

And then, he saw Molang right around the corner, lying down unconscious on the floor.

He tried calling his name but his throat was hoarse and prickly, that his voice barely reached Molang. He wanted to help him in that moment, but he assumed Molang was just running out of air to breathe like him. Huening Kai then prioritized going to the O2 to fix the fillers first, so everything could go back to normal.

When everything was fixed, he hurriedly went to check on his friend only to find out it's too late because he had no pulse anymore. That’s when he alarmed everyone of Molang’s body, his cries reverberating on the walls enclosing them.

The first time he held a dead body in his arms, he was six, all rosy cheeks and baby teeth. He witnessed how Tudi, a playmate, foamed at the mouth and convulsed under the scorching hot sun. It was a sunny summer, probably the hottest week of the year they’ve ever felt in that tropical country. He remembers the warmth coming from Tudi’s hand, how it never left his small body until they had to drag him away because he wouldn’t let go of Tudi’s hand.

He remembers how the neighbors came crying and screaming, shaking him by the shoulders, their eyes moist and terrified.

 _What happened?_ , they asked.

_What did he eat?_

_What did he eat?_

_What did you make him eat?_

The sun, Huening Kai wanted to say. It was the sun. Tudi gulped it down and now it rests on his stubborn belly.

After that incident, no mother had permitted their child to play with him, the sinister little kid with a toothy grin. He was too young to grasp what it's like to be wronged back then but now that he’s in the same situation again, somehow, it feels weird; it’s like someone dug a hole in his chest and buried something in thereㅡsomething heavy and burdensome.

Did it always feel like this?

He’s been trying so hard to save himself from the suspicions. All that filthy air of distrust and betrayal towards each other growing heavier day by day... it’s almost as if they’re back to that day when the ship had been sabotaged and they couldn’t breathe properly through their lungs. There’s Beomgyu who has been giving him the squint eyes since the incident and Soobin purposely avoiding his gaze whenever their eyes meet.

He really felt wronged, insulted. It almost seems like they’re being suspicious of Huening Kai and his claim of innocence towards Molang’s death. (Can’t he even mourn in peace now without being told off as dramatic?) He couldn’t do anything but tail Taehyun around whenever he has accomplished his tasks for the day and Taehyun still has things to be fixed. With that, Huening Kai freely offers him assistance.

To even think of running away in a time like this… it’s stupid to say this but it made him miss China sometimes, the very first place they’d escape to when his hometown was reduced to ashes. More even so, he misses his sister Lea, the only family he has that he left back in South Korea who never forgets to send him mails every month.

On days where he couldn’t even remember what good food tastes like or what the dewy morning air feels on his skin, he would go lock himself in the lower engine room and cry his heart out to the angry grumbling of the engine. It’s easy to lose yourself when you’re stuck in the outer space, you know. All that darkness and uncertainty surrounding you, draining everything from your body—the energy, the volition and integrity, and all the bittersweet memories of Earth he hold dearly in his heart, the planet he grew up with.

He still has Taehyun, of course—a true friend he shared his space dreams with in the attic of their family house back on Earth, scribbling maps on cardboards and writing intergalactic theories their young mind was hungry for.

On the positive side, he’s been assigned to The Skeld on his first year of internship. He knows it’s boring, just floating through the space like that. He’s aware that Mira Headquarters had a better atmosphere being set closer to Earth, and a more breathable station but he heard the tasks are more tiring with no room to rest, and it’s only if you’ve been promoted by the higher-ups could you step into the base. Lastly, never in his entire life would he even ask to be stationed in the arctic planet Polus, with the sight of volcanoes erupting everywhere and every time, lava just flows like hot scorching mud on the snow-covered ground.

Two weeks after the incident, Beomgyu called and informed everyone for an emergency meeting right away, out of nowhere. They all left their tasks unfinished as they all rush to meet everyone in the cafeteria. He finds Beomgyu’s lithe figure slouched on the edge of the round table, the laptop left blinking white light in front of him.

“Why did you call everyone here?” Taehyun asks.

Beomgyu waited for everyone to take their seats before he relays the agenda of today’s meeting.

“I saw someone go through the vents.”

Huening Kai is confused. “Vents?”

“Who?” Yeonjun immediately inquires.

Beomgyu shakes his head, brows knit in deep thought. “I’m not sure who it was. I was alone in the Reactor when I felt someone behind me but when I turned around, there was no one. I just heard the metal lid of the vent clanking.”

“Anything else you could remember?”

“I…I think he was wearing a blue suit on.” Beomgyu answers.

Their heads all whip towards Soobin, the only guy in The Skeld assigned with the blue spacesuit, and whose eyes were open and unblinking.

“Wh—what? Me, in the vents?” He scoffs. “Why would I be going through the vents?”

Yeonjun rolls his eyes beside him. “I don’t know, Soobin. Why don’t you ask that, yourself?”

“Look, I was in the Comms. I don’t know why you’re saying I went through the vents and had been in the same room as Beomgyu. I don’t know why we’re even here to discuss unnecessary things.”

Taehyun speaks up: “It’s not unnecessary if it could lead us to Molang’s death.”

“Or maybe it’s someone else.” Yeonjun adds. “Someone even closer to Molang. Just think about it: it would’ve been an easy job to come at someone’s back when you know them the most.”

“What are you trying to say, Yeonjun?” Beomgyu grouses, suddenly standing up from his seat.

Huening Kai shrinks further in his seat. He knows Yeonjun is referring to him. He was Molang’s best buddy. But why was he being framed up for the death of a friend? Shouldn’t Yeonjun know better, as he spent more working hours with him than anyone, as his assistant?

When Huening Kai finally speaks up, his voice is quiet and small. It’s almost a whisper. “I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do that to anyone in here. Especially not Molang.” Kai shakes his head. “No, not ever.”

“Then, prove it.” Yeonjun insists.

Taehyun was standing now too. “Hey, Yellow. Hey, don’t you think you’re crossing the line now?”

“So you’re more concerned about me crossing the line but not about the possibility of someone here being an impostor and could one day sabotage this entire ship and kill us all? Is that it?”

Taehyun blinks. “’I—that wasn’t what I was implying.”

Soobin coughs. “Yeonjun’s right, Taehyun. It happened once and it could happen again if we don’t catch this traitor first.”

Fixing his suit, Yeonjun stands up and announces, “You know what, I’m over this conversation. Do what you want to do. I got things to finish.”

With that, Yeonjun storms out of the cafeteria and leaves everyone terrified and flustered.

“Do you think Soobin did it?”

“What?” Taehyun mumbles.

Kai fidgets. “Molang’s death. Do you think he could do it?”

To Huening Kai, Soobin’s a companion whom he has messed with multiple times behind everyone’s backs and when everyone’s snoring like a dead man in the sleeping quarters. You can’t blame him—he’s a young man who craves another human’s touch too and he’s not really the best at suppressing his desires. He thinks of Soobin holding him by the hips, his fingers resting and occasionally thumbing the soft supple skin just below his navel, and how he always seem to know how to pull Huening Kai apart and drive him mad.

And no matter how weird this sounds, but he finds solace in him too, in difficult times.

Soobin… was he someone capable of killing Molang? Was knowing someone’s weakness and using it for one’s pleasure the same as creeping behind someone’s back before you kill them?

“Everyone in this ship can be subjected into suspicion as long as the case isn’t closed.“, Taehyun simply says as he glances over his shoulder for a second while he untangles the knot of coiled wiring on the electrical room.

Huening Kai raises his brow at him. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around? That everyone is deemed innocent until proven guilty with sufficient evidence?”

Taehyun laughs and throws his head back, his eyes turning into crescents. He untangles the last knot before he connects all the wires in place. He shakes his head at Huening Kai’s direction while he speaks.

“We’re not on Earth anymore, Kai.”

For Huening Kai, Earth was… a miserable and dysfunctional place with no chance of getting any better. Everyone’s poor and hopeless wherever you go. He had seen everything and everyone important to him crumble in front of him mercilessly.

What do you make out of a child whose young eyes have witnessed his own hometown go down in rubbles, when the ground he stands on doesn’t even feel like soiled ground anymore but a graveyard of his family, the smoke of persistent fires never going away for a week? Every time Huening Kai he hears a hissing sound so painful to the ears, he’s quick to press his eyes shut and utter a prayer under his breath asking if he could perhaps drop dead before the bang then it would be so much better.

(Maybe this is why he’s obsessed with The Skeld sometimes; all that burned-out hope of a place to call home coming alive at every moment they would sight a planet in the distance. Only if it was livable, then it would’ve been so easy to bring Lea here.)

He has learned to live with the trauma, of course. But that was when Lea was still around and he needed to stand up and act tough for her like a pillar when the world seems to be pitting against them. Yet now that he’s alone and million miles away and there’s darkness everywhere, it’s sickening to be stuck in a loop of emotional constipation. He wanted to take a break temporarily but this was clearly impossible with the situation they’re in.

After everyone was done with their own tasks, there was another emergency meeting held today at the cafeteria during dinner. Huening Kai always hated space food but that night, it was particularly remarkable how the pizza seemed to taste blandly than ever, and the soda tasted like piss. He wanted to throw up in the nearest trash bin.

And it didn’t help that they all seemed to act cautious around each other, wary and visibly flinching whenever one moves closer. Led by Yeonjun, all five of them had agreed to eject someone off the ship into the space once one of them is being awfully suspicious. But the thing is, how would they even know if someone’s being suspicious when the impostor is doing an awesome job at blending with them?

And what happens if he got voted off? Would he just die like that? The air being forced out of his lungs, dying of suffocation, body never reaching Earth again?

In all honesty, he kind of got used to Yeonjun and Beomgyu giving him the stares, and Soobin not making any eye contact with him, but Taehyun… he was being distant after that day. He tried to recall if he had said something rude to him but he remembered he haven’t been assisting Taehyun on his tasks for that week because everytime he’d ask if he needed help, he would only shrug in reply.

The only option Kai had was to confront him when he came across him in the security.

“Pink”, Kai attempts. “Are you avoiding me?”

Eyes glued to the cams and watching, Taehyun replies. “I think it’s best for me to keep a safe distance from everyone.”

“Even with me?” Through his helmet, there is a different tenderness in his voice. He sounds like he's begging for something. He almost sounds like a child again. “You know I didn’t do it.”

Taehyun swivels his chair around to face Huening Kai. “I don’t know, Kai. I’m not sure who to believe anymore.”

Maybe Huening Kai could take being misunderstood by the other guys in The Skeld but not thisㅡ not from his own best friend. Why was he being accused of something he didn’t even do? What is making him look suspicious in the eyes of the others? He didn’t understand this no matter how many times he pondered over it.

“You were the one who reported the body.”

The dim light inside the security is almost like a black hole sucking him in. The persistent white light coming from the screens is steady and unblinking, that it would hurt your eyes if you stare at it for too long. Huening Kai didn’t know where to look at, afraid that looking at Taehyun would only make him feel even smaller.

“Taehyun…” He wanted to scream at him, push him off the squeaking chair and punch him in the face. It was the least thing he wanted Taehyun to do: to be suscipicious of him. “I told you I was rushing to meet you guys in the O2 and on the way, I saw Molang’s body splayed on the floor. I—I was in a panic; I couldn’t even check if he was still alive or not. The only thing running on my mind on that moment was I was running out of air. I couldn’t breathe through my suit.”

“Let’s put it like this: if Molang’s accidental was truly accidental and he was still alive by the moment you saw him in the hallway, then you killed him nonetheless.” Taehyun asserts.

Confused, Huening Kai takes a cautious step backwards. “Why are you doing this to me, Taehyun? I thought we were bestfriends.”

Taehyun goes to take his seat again on the swivel chair, his back now facing Huening Kai. “I’m currently assigned on the cams, Kai.” He heaves a sigh. “Would you please step out of the room now?”

Respecting Taehyun’s wishes, Huening Kai left the security room with a heavy heart and to pick up the task he left off. He wonders then, if it’s easier to just surrender to everyone so they could lay their suspicions to rest.

Surely, they’d still mourn for his death once they find out it wasn’t him, right?

But here’s the thing: he's afraid of dying; he can't leave Lea alone.

The last time Huening Kai had tasted seaweed soup was on Lea’s birthday which coincided with the 1st anniversary of the genocide bombing in Honolulu that killed everyone he knew growing up, even his entire family. It was horribly funny, Huening Kai thinks; how they would be celebrating Lea’s birthday from now on in remembrance of a bloodline lost to humanity’s greed.

He remembers Lea’s expression that very morning, her face pale and lifeless, even through the sunshine hitting his sister’s face. There was no sunshine after the storm. It is still a storm. It seems like they’re living in the eye of it.

He was fourteen and just learning to cook. It was just a simple soup without any meat—they just can’t afford to buy it. Still, he wished that it was palatable enough for his sister to forget about meat cubes and the haunting memories of the previous year.

“How does it taste?” Huening Kai asks.

Lea turns stiff and the faint frown on her lips is starting to become evident. He’s frozen in his seat, too, anxious that asking his sister about it wasn’t the best thing to do.

Pushing the bowl away from her, Lea glares at him. “What do you want me to say, Kai? That it tastes like the memory of death?”

“No, that wasn’t—“

“From now on, let’s not celebrate birthdays.” Lea gulps as she looks away but Huening Kai catches the tear that runs down on her face anyway. “There is nothing to celebrate when your family is six feet under.”

Huening Kai used to think about it a lot: the taste of death. And even now as he lies down on the sleeping quarters, with the sound of the other guys snoring next to him, he couldn’t get this off his mind.

Would it still taste like that same day on Honolulu, soil and rust pressing hard against the tongue, or would it be any different now?

**Author's Note:**

> if u liked this, kudos n comments r appreciated! <3
> 
> anyway i made a new twitter acc if anyone who likes sookai / tyunning wants to be friends :D [twitter](https://twitter.com/viruulence)


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